I give up!

6 min read

Deviation Actions

HalTenny's avatar
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I'm officially giving up on trying to help keep the fractal resource category from being trashed by misplaced deviations. Through many support tickets in the past few months, DA has made it perfectly clear that misplaced deviations are very low on their priority list and should not be reported through support tickets at all. 

Here are a few observations and conclusions:

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I have found that once reported, misplaced deviations that also violate the DiviantArt advertising policy result in a deviant immediately having their account suspended and they are banned.

I've seen that 1800+ misplaced deviations from one deviant does seem to be enough for them to take action, but over 275 from another deviant is not enough for them to take action. They are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I tried to get a firm number on when I should stick my neck out and report multiple misplaced deviations, but the answer was, they are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. That was helpful...

DeviantArt is understaffed and they are unable to fully maintain this site.

DeviantArt realizes their staff does not have time to handle misplaced deviations and 'eventually' (their exact word) plan to work out a way to deal with miscats. Not soon, or right away, or as soon as possible, but eventually. A time frame for that was not given, but would have been nice.

DeviantArt allows posting copyrighted material as long as the copyright holder does not complain. It does not matter that you, and I, and everyone else on the planet knows they don't have permission to post those images.

You should only report misplaced deviations through the system they provide, (the report deviation button) even though they don't have time to deal with them anyway and they are given the lowest priority. One of the support tickets calmly explained how to do this, like I didn't know. I of course knew that reporting miscats that way would only result in an overwhelming probability that they would be ignored as low priority, thus explaining the reason why I sent the support ticket in the first place. And how else would you report 275 misplaced deviations by a single deviant?

Since I have been watching the fractal resource category, misplaced deviations have dropped from around 20 to 30 a day, down to around 2 to 8 per day. Just guessing, over 2000 misplaced deviations have been removed or avoided. That's over 16.5 pages (120 per page) of misplaced deviations. At least that's something.

Around a third of the deviants move their misplaced deviations when I inform them they are in the wrong category. Around a third block me and report my message as spam and the rest simply ignore me. :)

DeviantArt seems to be more concerned with the front end of their site, (like creating a Facebook like social network clone and increasing revenue), than maintaining the back end of the site, which are the areas that many of the dedicated artists use. (As well as new artists looking for resources)

Using Google translate to send messages to deviants who's main language is Spanish, Turkish or Vietnamese might help, but often seems to translate English into nearly incomprehensible gibberish. And by the way, the majority of photo packs being uploaded and placed in the fractal resources category are from fairly new accounts in the range of 1 to 12 months. None have a premium (core) account, and most of them are Spanish, Vietnamese and Turkish speaking females. I only bring that up as a fact from what I have seen, and it is not meant to be disparaging in any way, shape or form towards foreign persons, male or female. This may very well be as much a problem with DeviantArt not being foreign language friendly as anything. Or not.

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I realize that much of what I wrote above was snarky towards DA, but they deserve it in they way they handle some of the abuse of the site that goes on here. Overall, I've been satisfied with DA over the years. I've licensed a good bit of art and sold some prints, so I would like to see this place survive. I do feel Fine Art America is much better maintained and organized. Perhaps they don't have the social structure that DA does, but this site is supposed to be about art, and about supporting the artists, and not a dumping ground for teens and their infatuation for glamour photos and all the friends in their little groups that will fave them. All the photo packs are misplaced deviations because there is no category for them and it's copyrighted, illegally posted material anyway. 

While I don't know this for a fact, I'm pretty sure each new CV is required to clean up their respective categories of misplaced deviations at the beginning of their 'tour of duty'. And then miscats are allowed to build back up for the following 11 months until the next CV has to deal with them. So they are only dealt with on a yearly basis? It's no wonder misplaced deviations get out of hand and are such a problem.

At any rate, dealing with the misplaced deviations has been quite distracting and just makes my blood boil. I wouldn't mind if they were dealt with proactively and something was being done with all the reported miscats, but that just isn't the case. Even though the situation is somewhat better, it's still a loosing battle because DA is not dealing with it right now. My creativity has suffered, so I just have to give it up and try to get back into creating some art again, as soon as my blood pressure returns to normal. ;)

© 2015 - 2024 HalTenny
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HalTenny's avatar
Yes, it's a shame. I guess 'eventually' has not come around for DA yet. That's when they said they would find a way to deal with it~